Language on the Court

In terms of previous studies on the language of college men and its relation to masculinity, Deborah Cameron's article article "Performing Gender Identity: Young Men's Talk and the Construction of Heterosexual Masculinity" is exemplary. Her article is an analysis of the conversation of 5 white, college age males who are watching a basketball game and talking with each other. She identifies several aspects of what would be considered "conventionally feminine" (Cameron 2009:331) conversation such as cooperative features and gossip as well as "feminine" subjects such as clothing and bodily appearance. However, there is a paradox because the central component of the conversation is the gossip about others who are said to be "gay." She argues that the particular conversation she studies is a performance of heterosexuality. The speakers gossip about others who they argue are "gay" and thus locate homosexuality outside of their group. Language is ultimately an important mechanism for the individuals to assert their shared heterosexuality and locate homosexuality in the bodies of others. Although her sample fits a similar profile as the informants of this study, the conversation that I found in the space of the basketball court is not as sustained as the conversation described by Cameron, nor did I find gossip or "feminine subjects" to be typical components of the language on the court. This is not to say that in other contexts these players would never engage in the type of conversation described by Cameron, but rather the space of the pickup basketball game cultivates a different set of linguistic and bodily performances.

The students' language on the court rarely expresses "overtly sexist, racist, or classist attitudes" (Messner 2007:54), an observation made by Messner in a study of "college-educated, career-successful men" who played basketball and other sports when younger. Talk is kept at a minimum, and it is not conversational. Utterances are relatively minimal, and typically relate to game play. For instance, one common utterance, "pick," is said to inform teammates that an opponent is setting a pick. During one game, I observed that one informant only said the following words the entire game: pick, back door, watch the lane, fuck, and shit. The relatively minimal linguistic utterances on the court reinforces the court as a space for the bodily performance of masculinity. Masculinity is demonstrated through action, not words. One displays his masculinity to others not by his communicative competence but through his athletic competence. Emphasis is placed on basketball acumen rather than a command of basketball argot. Three informants all agreed that their mutual friend Shane* was the best player. His skills were termed "ridiculous," and they respected him off the court because of what he can do on the court. In this way, an individual focuses on displaying skill, which is ultimately a more powerful source of performing hegemonic, heterosexual masculinity. Although this differs from Cameron's findings, which is that discursively, heterosexual masculinity employs techniques commonly considered feminine, I do not think our findings are contradictory. The situations examined are different. Her informants were sitting around watching others play basketball on TV. My informants, on the other hand, are actually playing basketball. Their performance is embodied, whereas the performance of the young men studied by Cameron is purely linguistic. Her informants feel they must discursively locate homosexuality outside of their group, because their bodies have no agency in this situation. On the other hand, basketball players use their bodies to assert heterosexual masculinity by displaying skill in the sport. This is not to dismiss role of language, but rather argue that it is not central in the pickup basketball game.

In the narrative found in the Introduction, the informant uses two interesting phrases: "do or die" and "make it take it." As discussed in the introduction, the context of these is that he is describing how the players decide which team begins the game with possession of the ball. The notion that the body is the primary agent of masculine assertion is reinforced in these phrases. As we argued in the previous chapter, physical action and "doing" is associated with hegemonic masculinity. In these phrases, physical actions such as "doing" and "making" are rewarded with possession of the ball. To possess the ball is to symbolically be in charge of the game. Possession of the ball is necessary to accumulate points and ultimately win the contest. However, the ball does not just come to someone, he must be assertive to secure possession. He must "do" and "make," or assert and display his masculinity, or else he "dies." Thus, even the short utterances reinforce the play with masculinity that occurs on the basketball court

Before entering the field, I thought language would be an important source for examining how these young men construct and perform masculinities. I found that the linguistic practices during the game are not as symbolically rich as the embodied performances, such as the "skins" practice discussed in the Masculinities at Play section. Although they are brief, the utterances on the court still have symbolic meaning. A point for further research could be how the players later make sense of their basketball games. How do the young men recall their basketball games? What is the language of memory regarding the reconstruction of individual plays during the game or the basketball games in total? I hypothesize that the techniques described by Cameron may be more prevalent in these narratives than on the court itself. For instance, I hypothesize that the young men may "gossip" about other players when they are recalling games and may discursively construct others as homosexual or feminine.